Tuscarora arriving amid local Indian discontent

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Marilyn Mejorado’s paintings will be for sale at the 300th anniversary commemoration of the Tuscarora’s loss of lives and land at the battle at Fort Nooherooka in Greene County. Mejorado is a self-taught artist who paints pictures of her ancestors and is a member of the Bear clan in Bertie County.

Janet S. Carter / The Free Press

By Margaret Fisher, Staff Writer

Published: Thursday, March 21, 2013 at 10:05 PM.

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SNOW HILL — With the 300th anniversary commemoration of the Tuscarora underway, there is an air of disgruntlement by the Tuscarora Indians living in North Carolina.

A few Tuscaroran Indians from Robeson County began gathering at the Battle of Nooherooka site in Greene County this week in tents, but not without disruption. And others have made accusations about fraudulence and being left out of the event.

Property owner George Mewborn III told the Indians encamping on the property to leave. Greene County Sheriff Lemmie Smith said the Tuscarora moved onto the easement area near the main highway.

“They weren’t no problem,” he said. “They just respectfully got up and moved.”

Doug Anderson, Haudenosaunee Ska-Reh-Reh ambassador to the U.N. and Tuscarora Nation road commissioner, said three self-appointed chiefs from the Tuscarora Nation in New York — the only federally recognized Tuscarora — are fraudulently posing as chiefs to obtain funds to have Indian burial remains brought to the Tuscarora Nation Museum in New York.

Anderson and Marilyn Mejorado, Bear Clan mother in the Southern Band and artist residing in Bertie County, both contend Leo Henry, Kenneth Patterson and Stuart Patterson are fraudulently posing as chiefs.

Larry Tise, a historian at ECU, said he wasn’t aware of the allegations.

SNOW HILL — With the 300th anniversary commemoration of the Tuscarora underway, there is an air of disgruntlement by the Tuscarora Indians living in North Carolina.

A few Tuscaroran Indians from Robeson County began gathering at the Battle of Nooherooka site in Greene County this week in tents, but not without disruption. And others have made accusations about fraudulence and being left out of the event.

Property owner George Mewborn III told the Indians encamping on the property to leave. Greene County Sheriff Lemmie Smith said the Tuscarora moved onto the easement area near the main highway.

“They weren’t no problem,” he said. “They just respectfully got up and moved.”

Doug Anderson, Haudenosaunee Ska-Reh-Reh ambassador to the U.N. and Tuscarora Nation road commissioner, said three self-appointed chiefs from the Tuscarora Nation in New York — the only federally recognized Tuscarora — are fraudulently posing as chiefs to obtain funds to have Indian burial remains brought to the Tuscarora Nation Museum in New York.

Anderson and Marilyn Mejorado, Bear Clan mother in the Southern Band and artist residing in Bertie County, both contend Leo Henry, Kenneth Patterson and Stuart Patterson are fraudulently posing as chiefs.

Larry Tise, a historian at ECU, said he wasn’t aware of the allegations.

Although not listed on the agenda, Anderson said he intends to speak at Saturday’s event on what he says is fraudulence, and also speak on behalf of the North Carolina Tuscarora Indians’ desire to obtain their ancestors’ remains and be counted as Tuscarorans.

Anderson said he believes ECU archeologists want to close a long-disputed matter with the Indians in North Carolina that would basically take North Carolina Tuscarora off the map.

“If they recognize (the local Tuscarora),” he said about ECU, “then they won’t let them dig.”

Mejorado said out of at least 8,000 people that resided in North Carolina in the 1700s, only about 200 left to New York and Canada.

“We have maintained our homeland,” she said, “all the Tuscarora that stayed in North Carolina. We have maintained our heritage, our culture and our tradition, and our language as we speak it, as we spoke it in the 1700s.”

Mejorado said the Tuscarora have no borders. There are members in various places around the state and in other states, such as Florida and California, she said.

“When Six Nations took the Tuscarora in,” she said, “they took all of them in, not just those who moved up there among (Five Nations in the north).”

Mejorado said Dennis Greenhouse of the Department of Justice and representatives of the Bureau of Indian Affairs maintained in August 2007 that those who left the parent tribe and land (in N.C.) didn’t speak for the parent tribe when a treaty was signed in the 1700s federally recognizing the Tuscarora who left the state.

She said Six Nations — which was Five Nations before the Tuscarora were recognized — recognizes the Tuscarora in North Carolina.

Members of the Southern Band had always lived around Bertie following the Battle at Nooherooka in 1713, but reorganized in the 1990s, she said.

Mejorado alleges ECU archeologists dug up Tuscaroran remains illegally in Bertie County and have never given them back. She said there is a burial site in Bertie on the Indian Woods Reservation waiting for the return of the local Indians’ ancestors, and it is her goal to see that happen.

“The remains are exactly where they were in 2001,” Tise said. “They’re in storage and they’ve been published in several registers awaiting a legitimate request from the Tuscarora Nation or a qualified party to request repatriation.”

Mejorado also expressed dissatisfaction about the local Tuscarorans not being invited to speak at the event.

“No Tuscarora from North Carolina was invited to speak,” she said, “was contacted, was offered the opportunity to have any input. … we’re being pushed aside by those who are coming from New York.”

Tise said members of the New York Tuscarora Nation came up with the idea for the 300th year commemoration.

“They came to our conference last February,” he said about some of the New York members, “and said that they were planning a commemoration of Nooherooka 300 this year.”

Three conference speakers and Mewbornagreed to assist with the commemoration.

Tise said he had been researching Tuscaroran Indians who are looking for their ancestry for more than five years.

“I got involved with it because I’ve been studying the non-recognized Indians in North Carolina for a number of years,” he said.

Tise said the North Carolina Tuscarora Indians are welcome to the celebration.

He said he didn’t know of any Tuscarora within the state that have something of research interest to present, nor has anyone come to him with that type of information.

Mejorado said she has been working on Tuscarora ancestry for 25 years and has never had to invite herself to speak at places, such as Duke University.

Tise said Thursday there were at least 150 Tuscarora from New York bused into Greenville, and the first talk held at ECU was well-attended by Tuscarorans from both the state and the North.